Empowering staff to clean up around the workplace can be a difficult task. They may feel that it is outside of the range of their normal duties and thus, a great deal of hesitance can be encountered. Thankfully, there are a number of useful tactics that will help to encourage workers to keep an office tidy. Let us examine some of the most common methods.
Monetary Incentives
In the world of business, money talks. An excellent way to motivate anyone to perform a certain task is with a financial reward. If an office is comprised of multiple individuals working in cohesion, promise a small bonus at the end of each month in the form of a gift card to a local restaurant to the individual that keeps his or her workspace the cleanest. This one-off motivator will normally produce viable results.
Visual Cues
This idea works especially well in an office that contains a kitchen. Require all employees to label their cups, dishes and other eating utensils. Therefore, the owner of any dirty dishes can be made aware to the other workers. As a further incentive, the employee who consistently leaves his or her items in the sink may be forced to wash any and all dishes at the end of the week.
The Power of Overt Competition
The business world has always embraced internal office competitions, as results are quickly seen. As opposed to an individual monetary incentive, reward a certain group for their efforts (a sales or IT team, for instance). Each group will earn a certain amount of “points” or even poker chips if they are seen to be cognisant of their working and eating areas. At the end of the month, the tally of all of the chips will be counted. The team with the most chips will have a night out completely catered to by the office. This is another excellent motivator that has offered proven results.
Of course, there are countless other ways to foster a clean work environment. By embracing the concepts of competition and a bit of fun, a tidy office will very literally be just around the corner.